


Something Else

by sidewinder



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Episode Related, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-07 09:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14078010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidewinder/pseuds/sidewinder
Summary: Three years, after all, wasn’tthatlong.Three moments in a relationship that lead to something long denied.





	Something Else

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> This story contains references to events in the episodes "Night", "Cold" and "Zebras".

She drifted in and out of consciousness, not sure which was better, which was worse. Part of her struggled to stay awake and find focus, to summon forth the memories of what had happened to her to leave her in such pain.

The other part of her craved sleep, to not have to think about any of it. To make it all go away the only way she could—by losing herself to the darkness and praying that when she woke up it would all be gone.

A bad dream.

A nightmare as fleeting and unreal as the time missing from her memories.

Memories, she worried, that might be better left undiscovered.

Olivia was there when she first woke up, and she looked upset. Casey knew the detective somehow felt responsible for what happened, but she had enough of her own problems on her mind; she couldn’t be the one to try to understand or offer any words of support. Soon there were other visitors who came and went as she slipped between sleep and wakefulness. In fact it seemed like it was someone else every time she opened her eyes.

Jack McCoy, representing the state, offering concern and stiff well-wishes from all at the DA’s office.

Doctors and nurses, checking in on her and taking notes, asking her about pain levels and she just wanted them all to leave. She wanted to go home.

She wanted...a comfort she doesn’t expect, so it surprised her to wake up at one point to see this particular visitor sitting there at bedside.

Her presence made Casey immediately want to sit up a little straighter in bed, but that only made her wince at the effort.

“Don’t get up on my part,” Liz said, offering a tight-lipped smile.

“I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to.”

“Then don’t. I just...needed to see with my own eyes that you were going to be okay. Find out if I could get you anything.”

“Besides my hospital discharge papers?”

Liz tilted her chin upward, looking proud of Casey. “That sounds like the fighter I know. Never good with anyone else taking care of you, are you?”

“I’m not good at being a victim who’s left feeling helpless...I can’t even remember what happened to me,” she admitted, struggling to hold back emotions that she’d tried not to show to the others. She especially didn’t want to show them to Liz. “And that’s the worst part of it.”

“I understand.” And Elizabeth took her hand. It was cool, and firm, and exactly the kind of comfort Casey needed in that moment. “But if there is one thing you aren’t, Casey, it’s helpless. You will get through this to come back and fight another day.”

Liz was right. At least, Casey hoped she was. She soon drifted off, and the next time she awoke she was alone at last.

And this time, she wished that she wasn’t.

* * *

_“What should I do next?”_

_“Something else.”_

 

Casey took one last, slow walk around her emptied apartment. In part it was to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, but she also needed to give it—and this city she had called home for so many years—a proper goodbye. The keys she’d no longer be needing weighed heavy in her right hand, so she placed them on the kitchen counter where the landlord had told her to leave them.

He’d been surprisingly accommodating when she’d asked to end her lease early, or if he’d be willing to allow her to sublet it until the end of term. Then again, he probably had someone lined up already, eager to offer up twice the rent she’d been paying here for the past seven years.

That was the way things went in New York, she supposed. There was always another ready to take your place the instant you slipped and fell.

And Casey had certainly fallen—hard, and fast. So fast. She was not proud of it, even if she believed she’d been acting in the name of greater justice. She wasn’t going to stick around and try to fight it. She knew, deep down, she’d been caught in a serious ethical violation and gotten exactly what she deserved.

The moving truck she’d hired had left about an hour ago. She’d done a final broom-sweep after they’d finished up, pulling together her overnight belongings. She would follow behind shortly in her rental car.

A one-way rental, of course. Once she got to Virginia, she assumed she’d have to find a more permanent mode of transportation. Having a car in New York City had always seemed more expense and trouble than it would be worth. Now, she could already hear her mother’s voice in her head, telling her, _“Just take the Taurus. Your father isn’t using it any longer. Won’t do anyone any good going rusty in the garage.”_

Something else.

Something like crawling back home with her tail between her legs. Three-years censure, suspended license. Three years to find “something else” to do with herself, her life, before seeing if she could build any kind of career again in the legal profession. If she’d even want to, at that point.

No doubt it was a better sentence, at least, than the one Chester Lake was facing. But _he_ hadn’t needed to hear his fate delivered by the one person who had been a close friend and mentor for years. Someone Casey had aspired so much to be like, someone she’d wanted to...or at least wondered if...

 _If_.

If some day, there could be even more to their relationship than what it had been.

But so much for any of that now. Maybe the possibility, the hint and undercurrents, had all been in her imagination. Pure wish-fulfillment on her part. The eager young ADA with a pathetic crush on the smart and experienced, successful and beautiful, older and unattainable woman.

Elizabeth would probably get a good laugh out of that...if she wasn’t so disappointed in Casey. Though she had come by to see her, one last time, as she’d packed up her office at One Hogan Place the week before. That final conversation had played through Casey’s mind many times since then, as she’d tried to analyze and read between the lines as she might with a witness she was interrogating on the stand.

_“It could have been worse, Casey.”_

_“I know, and I’m not complaining.” Casey knew she could have been permanently disbarred for what she’d done. It was likely only her strong conviction record and support from some of those above her in the DA’s office that had granted her some leniency. “I did what I knew was the wrong thing hoping it would lead to the right verdict in the end. If anything, it’s clear to me I’ve gotten too deep into these cases.”_

_“Special Victims is tough to take on for this long.”_

_“It is. I need this break to reground myself. To be honest, I don’t know how you managed the job for as long as you did.”_

_“I made my fair share of mistakes. And why do you think I resigned as Bureau Chief and moved into judgeship? I figured it was time for me to look at things from a more...neutral point of view.” Liz leaned against a desk stripped bare of personality, crossed her arms over her chest. “So. Have you decided on what you’re going to do next?”_

_Casey shrugged and told her, “I’m not sure. Head back to Virginia for a while at least. Spend some time with my mom and dad...he’s not doing so well these days, or so my mother keeps telling me.” Alzheimer’s, or dementia...she couldn’t get her mother to clarify. Either way it was proving a lot for her to handle though she refused to see the need for outside help._ _“Alexandria is near enough to D.C. that I think I can find some advocacy work to do. If I can’t fight for victims in court, maybe I can at least guide them to the help they need.”_

_“There are many possibilities. I could see you in a career in politics, Casey. You have the fire and passion for it.”_

_Casey laughed. “The foolishness too, I suppose.”_

_“It’s not foolish to stand up for your beliefs. But in the courtroom the law has to prevail even if it means, sometimes, the guilty go free.”_

_“Whereas in politics, it’s often about beating the law?”_

_“Or writing new ones.” Liz gave her a sly smile, one Casey had to look away from before she allowed too much of her feelings to show through._

_Silence fell between them. “I’ll miss this, though,” Casey said after a while._

_“The crimes and victims who keep you up at night?”_

_“No. Because I doubt they’ll ever leave me. But I’ll miss...time spent with you. Talking. Learning...”_

_“Arguing...”_

_“Sometimes, often, yes, that too!”_

_Liz touched her shoulder, the sly smile turning unusually warm, wistful. “I will miss that too, Casey. So just know that in three years, I imagine there will be a place for you here in New York, if you want it still.”_

She had nodded and said thanks. And she’d almost said it then, almost asked, if that place might be with Liz. And not necessarily working together, but...otherwise. In the way they never could be together before because it would have been improper. Yet another breech of ethics, one for which they could both face the consequences.

She’d come so close, in that moment. After all, there’d been nothing more to lose, had there been?

But then Casey had stopped herself, courage running dry.

Three years, after all, wasn’t _that_ long.

Casey shrugged her purse over her shoulder and grabbed her suitcase. After one final glance over her shoulder, she closed the apartment door behind her.

This might be the end to one chapter. But she had a feeling that New York would be calling her back, eventually.

And Elizabeth Donnelly, especially.

* * *

Casey didn’t like hospitals. In her experience, nothing good ever seemed to happen in them.

So many victims she’d visited—in fact right here in this same specific hospital. The same one where she’d awoken once before—several years before—bruised, but not broken.

But still. She didn’t like hospitals, and she especially didn’t like them when she was there to visit someone who once meant—who continued to mean—a great deal to her.

“I’m going to be fine, Casey,” Liz protested, after quick surprise pleasantries had been exchanged. And much to Casey’s relief, she did look fine. And quite pissed off to be in a hospital bed instead of on her way home.

“I hear you could have been killed!”

“And in a most ungodly embarrassing way, too.”

Casey smiled. She had heard the story from her old friend Grace, at the courthouse, and couldn’t quite believe it. Then again, working as SVU ADA as long as she did, she had seen and heard plenty of crazy things. “I’m told he killed Ryan O’Halloran. And a lawyer. And almost Elliot Stabler as well.”

“All it takes is one madman to do far too much damage.” Liz sighed and shifted in her bed. It was clear she would rather be anyplace else in the world and Casey didn’t blame her. “In any event, how have you been, Casey?”

“Good, I suppose.”

“Keeping busy?”

“Always. Though career-wise, I feel like I’m still dabbling in my options.” Her father’s health had proven to be worse than her mother had been letting on, and with no siblings in a stubborn and proud family she had been left with her hands full. But she didn’t resent it; in a way she was grateful to have the time now to be there for her parents after all they had done for her.

She had picked up some tutoring work via her old high school—several smart kids trying to work hard to get into the best universities, so a local Harvard law graduate such as herself was high in demand. She’d done some networking at the university club in D.C. as well, thought about the political possibilities Liz had mentioned...

...and she just wasn’t sure her heart was in it. She got more out of her once a month trip to Philadelphia, where Fielding has offered her a place in the Vidocq society. On those trips she tried not to think about it too much in terms of being Lake’s old place.

But fighting for the victims, prosecuting crimes...she felt in her heart that that would always be her true calling. So maybe she would simply have to wait out the rest of her time in limbo. Take advantage of the things she could do now while free from those weighty responsibilities.

Like being here, on this night.

“You didn’t have to come,” Liz insisted, but in her words Casey could hear gladness that she had.

“Yes. I did. Because there are things I always meant to say to you and I never got the chance. And when I heard what happened, I was afraid...that maybe I might miss that opportunity.”

“Casey...?”

So much she had to say. That she’d had most of a year to think about, to rehearse in her head, to reason for and against. But now, here with Liz, she found all her well-rehearsed scripts failing her. So what she couldn’t say clearly she decided to go forward and just show.

And so she leaned down, over the bed, and placed a kiss on Liz’s mouth before Liz could finish asking the question on her lips.

It was a soft kiss. A test. An opening argument for a case she desperately needed to win. And she got the feeling from Liz’s gentle acceptance of it that her argument was well-received. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” Casey confessed as she pulled away.

Liz merely smiled and said, “I know.”

“Is it all right if I stay for a while?”

“Please. Keep me from going stir-crazy. And tell me more about what you’ve been doing...because I’ve missed you.”

She did stay, holding Liz’s hand in her own, until Liz drifted off to sleep. And when she woke up, Casey knew would still be there to tell her the rest of the story.

 


End file.
